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Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 02:31
by Agamemnon
SAs are a different issue, I think. Even if we handled SAs in a totally different way, the issues with skills v. attributes would still exist.

With X+Y, the three big problems are thus:
1. The 1-5 scale doesn't provide enough mechanical weight between the average character and a master.
2. The 1-5 scale makes it too easy to max out characters.
3. A point of an attribute is worth a point in a skill.

Because we have a priority-pick system, you're ultimately buying skills and attributes out of the same pool of resources. As long as 3 is true, you're always better off investing in attributes than skills, because attributes are more valuable to more things. As it stands, a point you put into Agility or Cunning is worth as much as buying a rank in every single proficiency and half the skills in the game, in addition to whatever attribute rolls they might come up in.

In the proposed change, attributes are extremely valuable in their own right -- every one of them has specific and necessary uses regardless of your character type -- but their impact on combat pools has been lessened, and their impact on skills reduced significantly.

Decoupling them also fixes 1 and 2, because the ranges can be increased without increasing the size of the die pool.

There have been a lot of suggestions floating around, but so far none of them have fixed all three of the above issues without either:
  • Bloating the die pool beyond what I'm comfortable with. I don't want to be throwing buckets of dice at a thing. I play Warhammer 40,000. I spend enough time sifting through piles of dice. Plus, the more dice you have involved, the swingier everything becomes.
  • Making things more complicated, whether by procedure, mathematical complications, or extra rules for how the bits fit together.
The closest/best alternative proposal to what I've suggested thus far has just been to expand the scale to 1-7 or (1-8), leave X+Y, and make peace with the fact that you're going to chuck 20 dice at a skill check from time to time.

This could almost work if we assumed that the low-end of the scales remain the same and 95% of the population is going to have 2s and 3s for their stats.. but now we're stuck with a host of problems new and old.
  • Attributes are still the best thing to buy regardless of your character concept. As a thief with our present spread, I'd much rather have maxed out agility/cunning and 3s in my skills than 3s in agility/cunning and a max a half-dozen skills. I'd easily rather have Social 6 and middling social skills than maxed out social skills and a middling Social. The only partial work-around would be to make attributes a strange acception to everything else about character creation and give everyone the same amount of points to spend. Aside from this being both an acception and less interesting, it still doesn't completely solve the problem because that just means after character creation my thief is going to want to max out cunning and agility before they do anything else.
  • Naked Dwarf was being argued about before and we'd make it much worse now. Instead of someone with +3 damage fighting +5 damage resist, you can have someone with +3 damage fighting someone with +7 damage resist.
  • We also have the less-discussed Dragon Tap issue, which is the reverse -- My strength 7 individual can now go against a stamina 3 guy and get an MoS1 death from any weapon of +0 or higher. A brawler with the striking proficiency can kill on an MoS1. With only 5 levels of wounds, you cannot have the difference between your damage dealing ability and damage deflecting ability higher than 4 at the most extreme for humans fighting humans, and you want it to be significantly less so for "average" fights. The lower that maximum difference, the fewer things screw up.
  • Rather than having a small number of attributes that are each very important for different things, we have one collection of attributes that primarily exist to build things out of (two of which presently exist solely for skill checks), and a second set of attributes we actually use to roll things. Paradoxically, despite attributes as a category being a better investment than skills or proficiencies, none of the individual attributes are as strong in their functions because they are always being balanced out by something else.
  • I'm still not thrilled about the idea of needing dice cups to make skill checks.
I'll come back and reply to specifics that have come up since my last marathon-quote-response tomorrow. I need bed.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 02:51
by nemedeus
Agamemnon, this is really going into a direction I had with my own designs before Bastards.

My system has an attribute range of 1 to 4 (!)
Skills had a range of 1 to 10 and were tied to an attribute, but in a very different way: instead of getting a bonus, your skill it's limited to triple your attribute.
I defined a skill rating of 4 as "professional" and a rating of 6 as "master", with 7 - 10 being reserved for living legends.
So with only an "average" 2 in an attribute, you'd be enabled to reach great levels of competence.

Note that attributes still had their own direct uses.

I do believe I eventually switched to attribute range 1 - 5 and skill maximum of attribute x2, but I still had special benefits at every third rank (unlockable perks, to be exact).

Not sure if this is helpful. Make of this what you will.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 06:18
by Korbel
nemedeus wrote: My system has an attribute range of 1 to 4 (!)
Skills had a range of 1 to 10 and were tied to an attribute, but in a very different way: instead of getting a bonus, your skill it's limited to triple your attribute.
I defined a skill rating of 4 as "professional" and a rating of 6 as "master", with 7 - 10 being reserved for living legends.
Obviously, you have lost the X+Y system, which has a lot of fans (me myself included). So, you need to bring it back... Now, with average Attribute score 2 and 4 dice from being experienced in a given skill, you have a pool of 6 - which I believe is exactly what Agamemnon fancies.
That would be basically identical to what I suggested, just with lowered scales. And now you need two different Ob-tables or applying a system of 2A+B for rolling Attributes, just like me....
What about the scale 1-4 for Attributes? It's not really wide. I'd suggest adding the level of ZERO, which would be for someone really bad in a given area, but still playable. So, you have five steps:
0 - awful, catastrophic
1 - weak
2 - average
3 - good
4 - fantastich
You could probably add a fifth dot to represent freaks and legends, but it kinda breaks the nice balance (where skill potentially provides twice as much dice as Att, 8-4). Make sure it would be really rare and expensive.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 07:52
by Benedict
Agamemnon wrote:SAs are a different issue, I think. Even if we handled SAs in a totally different way, the issues with skills v. attributes would still exist.
With all due respect, SAs enhance the problem the way they are. An unskilled character with SA5 and Atr5 is equal to a character with Atr5 Skill5 and no applicable SA.

About these problems.
Agamemnon wrote:With X+Y, the three big problems are thus:
1. The 1-5 scale doesn't provide enough mechanical weight between the average character and a master.
2. The 1-5 scale makes it too easy to max out characters.
3. A point of an attribute is worth a point in a skill.
Before I continue I want to quote something straight from the Beta.
pg 7-8 wrote:WHY PLAY BASTARDS?
1. Band of Bastards is a game about player-agency and presenting meaningful choices at every turn. Strategic play and clever decisions trump high scores and big weapons.
2. Combat is fast...
3. Melee combat...
4. Ranged combat...
5. Players are given mechanical incentives not just to participate in the story, but to take an active role
in driving it forward based on their character’s goals and convictions. When characters are fighting
for what they believe in, they are not only more successful at doing so, but gain additional benefits that
allow them to pull off more dramatic feats as the story goes on.
6. Finally, player characters are turned loose fully-powered at character creation, letting you play the kind of character you want from the beginning without having to “earn” the right to be competent through play.
So, why play Bastards really? This opening paragraph is the reason I bothered with Bastards in the first place. I intentionally left out points 2, 3, and 4, as I believe they are out of context with the discussion at hand.
Point 1 wrote:The 1-5 scale doesn't provide enough mechanical weight between the average character and a master.
Point 3 wrote:3. A point of an attribute is worth a point in a skill.
There are two reasons the way I see it that happens. The first is that Trained vs Untrained is not covered correctly in the first place. That's why I suggested earlier that Untrained skill use should give you a +2Ob penalty.
CharA has AG3 Larceny3 and wants to pick a good (Ob4) lock? 6d10 vs Ob4. Success 34%.
CharB has AG6, nil Larceny, and wants to do the same thing? 6d10 vs Ob6. Success 1%.

The 1-5 range doesn't provide enough mechanical weight because Skills work the way they do. With my combined suggestions regarding SAs, Tool effect, Expertise effect, and raising caps from 1-5 to 1-6 for top priority pickers that problem in my mind disappears. Bear in mind that the tweaks I suggested earlier are not to be seen as multiple choices. These are tweaks meant to work together.

Does that solution really makes things more complicated? :?:
Point 2 wrote:2. The 1-5 scale makes it too easy to max out characters.
Now, that. That kills entirely the "player characters are turned loose fully-powered at character creation" statement earlier. Almost every game I know out there is about creating a character and advance him through play. The "play what you want from the start" concept in my eyes is a stroke of genius that sets you guys apart from every other game out there.

These points addressed, throwing away the X+Y concept is just a mortal blow to the "Strategic play and clever decisions trump high scores and big weapons". Just see at the Floating City campaign how I goaded the main antagonist in a duel that was in my favor when they had us cornered and outnumbered.

My favorite games (not trying to advertise anything here), despite their flaws, have always being Exalted and old 7th Seas. Both have the X+Y concept in them making ideal for telling stories and resolving conflicts creatively instead of "roll that to succeed, otherwise you fail". I Know both this approach and this statement over-simplified, I'm only doing it for simplicity's sake. If I'm asked to elaborate more on the subject I will. :)

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 09:48
by EinBein
[color=#00FF00]higgins[/color] wrote:
EinBein wrote:
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:Skills and attributes are rolled independently.
Still hoping to avoid this. Just due to the huge difference we experienced after two days of Shadowrun and one day of BoB in direct succession. For the narrative with naturally lazy players at my table, the X+Y was a gamechanger.
Can you elaborate on this?
For sure, but I'd like to do so in my playtest report that is currently sleeping in my forum drafts... I need some time to finish it and add specific examples where my players were more descriptive than they would normally be in a game of Shadowrun.

Marras is mostly right, but I can't see how decoupling X and Y more or less completely would be better than having fixed X+Y? In both cases, you aren't required to describe your action more than necessary (even though I must admit that the strict announcement of intent and task is already better than you would do in a casual game of Shadowrun).
nemedeus wrote:What if the Social Attribute influences a character's ability to work as a team?
No offense nemedeus, but that's again one of those solutions that actually harm the flow by adding clutter (need to check attributes and calculate new TN's) and exceptions (from the otherwise consistent BTN). I fully support Agamemnon and higgins when they keep their system free of such things.
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:With X+Y, the three big problems are thus:
1. The 1-5 scale doesn't provide enough mechanical weight between the average character and a master.
2. The 1-5 scale makes it too easy to max out characters.
Agreed. That's maybe a bit too close to be comfortable. Although the spirit of "playing what you want from the beginning" requires at least adapted starting points for attributes and skills. Actually I begin to like the idea of extending the scales to something not as high as 1-10 maybe...
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:3. A point of an attribute is worth a point in a skill.
[...]As long as 3 is true, you're always better off investing in attributes than skills, because attributes are more valuable to more things. [...]
This is where I don't agree. Though attributes and skills are picked during character creation, they get different value from the amount of points you get from a specific priority.
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:If I decide my concept is thief, I really need: Athletics, Larceny, Legerdemain, Manipulation, Stealth, and Streetwise.
Even if you only consider six skills (like Agamemnon in the above quote) with no additional skills for character individualization and include the starting point in attributes, you get the following:
  • Prio 5: average attribute rating 3.5 or average skill rating 5.2
  • Prio 4: average attribute rating 3.1 or average skill rating 4.2
  • Prio 3: average attribute rating 2.9 or average skill rating 3.3
  • Prio 2: average attribute rating 2.6 or average skill rating 2.7
  • Prio 1: average attribute rating 2.3 or average skill rating 1.7
If you consider an even distribution of the eight attributes among the twenty-four skills, every attribute would be used three times more than any skill. So even if you get less average ratings in attributes (at least in the upper priority picks), the attribute pick is much more worth due to the more frequent use. Imho, this has a huge impact on the felt disparity.

There is no "1 attribute = 1 skill = 1 die"-equality, but an "3.5 attribute used 3 times > 5.2 skill used 1 time"-disparity. To solve this while still retaining X+Y, you can ...
  • change the priority tables to give less average attributes and more average skills
  • increase the qualitative value of skill rating in comparison to attribute rating
First solution needs some tinkering with the tables. This should be easy. The second one is more complicated. I tried the less-skill-than-ob-can-only-generate-mitigated-success-rule, but this ultimately was inspired by the Shadowrun 5 limit rule:
Shadowrun 5 rules wrote:Successes are only counted up to the applicable limit.
Limits come in several forms like physical, social, mental and magical limits (each derived attributes ((A*2 + B + C)/3) that apply to skills of the related type) and precision (each weapon's inherent limit).

Example: If you run like hell in a roof top chase scene and roll 8 successes in athletics skill test but have only a physical limit of 6, 2 successes are lost.

Imho, this is again too much clutter. You need to check the applicable limit before being able to see what happens. But as an alternative:
[color=#00FFFF]Proposal 1[/color] wrote:Successes are only counted up to the skill rating (+2 with expertise or something).
[color=#00FFFF]Proposal 2[/color] wrote:MoS is only counted up to the skill rating.
This is certainly less elegant than the first proposal though...
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:The closest/best alternative proposal to what I've suggested thus far has just been to expand the scale to 1-7 or (1-8), leave X+Y, and make peace with the fact that you're going to chuck 20 dice at a skill check from time to time.
Now we're speaking the same language ;) If you play 40k, you certainly use those nice little white dice. Those are changing a lot in comparison with d10 in terms of rollability in high numbers. This in its own right will increase the logical limit of pool sizes.
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:Attributes are still the best thing to buy regardless of your character concept.
This is not true if you try the two things explained above: Change the values in the priority tables and add qualitative value to skills.
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:[...] Dragon Tap [...]
That's true and a bad thing. I personally think that we need a workaround. In the same spirit as my above proposal, one could say:
[color=#00FFFF]Proposal 3[/color] wrote:The wound level of any hit is capped at the amount of invested dice in the attack maneouvre (with or without AC?).
In this way, even if you hit a naked beggar with DR of 6 but have only invested one die to attack, the hit can only be a graze. I'm still trying to find a Naked Dwarf cure...
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:[...] number of attributes [...]
I've no problem with some of the attributes being scrapped.
[color=#00FF00]Agamemnon[/color] wrote:[...] needing dice cups to make skill checks [...]
I can easily roll 15 dice without cup. Especially d6. More will be rare or render auto successes (when you increase the limit from 10 to 15)...

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 11:56
by Marras
EinBein wrote: Marras is mostly right, but I can't see how decoupling X and Y more or less completely would be better than having fixed X+Y? In both cases, you aren't required to describe your action more than necessary (even though I must admit that the strict announcement of intent and task is already better than you would do in a casual game of Shadowrun).
True, decoupling doesn't require as much description as X+Y ideally does. On the other hand it allows as much description with even less restriction :)

I have been waving the flag for decoupling attributes from skills as it makes thing easier but in principle using X+Y is just fine with me.
I can easily roll 15 dice without cup. Especially d6. More will be rare or render auto successes (when you increase the limit from 10 to 15)...
I suppose I could, too. It's totally different thing if I would want to do that.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 17:36
by Benedict
EinBein wrote:Proposal 1
Successes are only counted up to the skill rating (+2 with expertise or something).
Essentially that's similar to a Roll and Keep concept. The only drawback I can see with that is that when one of X or Y determines Keep value (or success cap) it outshines the other element (Y or X respectively)

That was the problem with 7th Seas, where your attributes are a lot better than your skills because they determine keep value. Even if I suggested earlier to explore the possibility of a Keep formula, on second thought Keep will retain, if not aggrevate, the fact that X is better than Y. Unless some complex calculations are involved, which will add clutter.

That is exactly the reason why I suggested a flat increase in OB when one attempts to do with Atr alone (untrained) as opposed to someone trained in the Skill required.
EinBein wrote:Proposal 3
The wound level of any hit is capped at the amount of invested dice in the attack maneouvre (with or without AC?)
I'm so onboard with this. Simple, elegant, no complex calcs needed.
EinBein wrote:
Agamemnon wrote: [...] number of attributes [...]
I've no problem with some of the attributes being scrapped.
I have no problem with that either. Or even Attributes increased to 9. Or switching from d10 to d6. Or extending range of stats from 1-5 to 1-7 (but not more, sounds too much).

In all honesty my chief concerns here are to maintain both the X+Y Model and the "Play the character you want from the start" Concept.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 18:34
by nemedeus
Benedict wrote:
In all honesty my chief concerns here are to maintain both the X+Y Model and the "Play the character you want from the start" Concept.
Would you be okay with having to derive a check bonus from attributes then? Thinking mostly Attribute minus 2 here.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 16 Dec 2016, 22:58
by DannyBoy
My idea is this:

1. Keep attributes at 1-5 scale with 6 being exceptional
2. Increase skills to a 1-10 scale
3. Increase the number of skill points at chargen
4. Keep X+Y

I really feel that a lot of us are making this whole issue a lot more complicated than it needs to be, what with all the check bonuses, fractions, and only counting successes up to the attribute value.

Also, while I'm not wholly averse to changing the die type to a d6, I will say that it does change how base TN shifts work in too drastic a way. A level 3 wound is supposed to begin the death spiral by boosting TNs to 8. TN 7 was fluffed as a wound that could be fought through, and with the 'grin and bear it' SA ability it can be easily worked around, which it's supposed to be. Also, with d6s, are we doing away with exploding dice?

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 17 Dec 2016, 20:05
by Agamemnon
Benedict wrote:With all due respect, SAs enhance the problem the way they are. An unskilled character with SA5 and Atr5 is equal to a character with Atr5 Skill5 and no applicable SA.
They enhance the problem. They aren't the problem. Several components of the problem exist with or without them and thus must be dealt with independently of them. Thus, it's an issue to deal with separately if such an issue still exists when we are done.
Benedict wrote:There are two reasons the way I see it that happens. The first is that Trained vs Untrained is not covered correctly in the first place. That's why I suggested earlier that Untrained skill use should give you a +2Ob penalty.
CharA has AG3 Larceny3 and wants to pick a good (Ob4) lock? 6d10 vs Ob4. Success 34%.
CharB has AG6, nil Larceny, and wants to do the same thing? 6d10 vs Ob6. Success 1%.

The 1-5 range doesn't provide enough mechanical weight because Skills work the way they do. With my combined suggestions regarding SAs, Tool effect, Expertise effect, and raising caps from 1-5 to 1-6 for top priority pickers that problem in my mind disappears. Bear in mind that the tweaks I suggested earlier are not to be seen as multiple choices. These are tweaks meant to work together.

Does that solution really makes things more complicated?
This thread has gotten too long, and I've been multitasking too much to keep track of everyone's separate suggestions. You'd have to lay the entire thing out in one place for me to actually see how the thing worked. Immediately, though, I have to point out:
1. You're still not addressing the "one point of an attribute is worth a point of a skill" problem, which makes attributes better in general because they apply to more stuff.
2. Whether you're giving dice for tools or dis/advantage for tools, that doesn't change the core issue of skills.
3. Nothing we do about untrained skill checks helps the core problem. It simply means my optimal build becomes "max stat, 1 point in as many skills as possible."
4. Top priority pick is already 6 ranks in skills or attributes.
Benedict wrote:Now, that. That kills entirely the "player characters are turned loose fully-powered at character creation" statement earlier. Almost every game I know out there is about creating a character and advance him through play. The "play what you want from the start" concept in my eyes is a stroke of genius that sets you guys apart from every other game out there.

These points addressed, throwing away the X+Y concept is just a mortal blow to the "Strategic play and clever decisions trump high scores and big weapons". Just see at the Floating City campaign how I goaded the main antagonist in a duel that was in my favor when they had us cornered and outnumbered.
I feel like this is an unfair exaggeration. Unless you're trying to tell me that your character concept was the mechanical goal "The maximum thing mechanically possible," then this doesn't change anything -- let alone deal a "mortal blow." The statistics your character has (skills, proficiencies, whatever) only matter in what those numbers mean relative to the fiction and how they compare against the rest of the world. If your average NPC has 3s and 4s in their stats and you can have 6s and 7s in the stuff you want to do, it doesn't matter whether the max is 7 or 20.

If anything, I'd say the current setup is a bigger deterrent to "play the character you want." My concept is a master thief. I max out stealth and larceny. The problem? My five dots isn't enough in that skill to reliably and consistently beat someone who has 3 dots Trade: Guard (or, worse -- 4 dots, if they were good, professional guards rather than your average town watch) 6 or 7 dice vs 8, if we assume equal attributes. If I want to actually put statistics consistantly in my favor, I now have to go max out some attributes as well to make sure I have enough dice.

On the other hand, the current proposal puts a great amount of distance between you and said guard's skill pools. He's probably got a 4 and you could start at 7 or 8, to a maximum of 10 if you went with a tier-5 priority.

EinBein wrote:This is where I don't agree. Though attributes and skills are picked during character creation, they get different value from the amount of points you get from a specific priority.
It doesn't matter how many points you get from a given priority. At the end of the day Agility 5 Stealth 3 is both mechanically indistinguishable from Agility 3 and Stealth 5 and objectively better than Agility 3, Stealth 5. For the aforementioned thief, Agility will be the dominant attribute for at least 4 of those six skills. Any point put in agility is going to be 4x as valuable as one point in any given skill plus any untrained skill I have, plus one point in every proficiency in the game because it's the part of the base combat pool.

Even if you lower the number of attribute points you can spend overall, you're still going to be better off investing in more attributes than less at character creation. The best one could do to adjust from the priority table is make it so the steps between levels of priority were less beneficial for attributes than anything else (say, 2.3 for level 1 but only 3 for tier 5) but that has the opposite problem. If tier 3 is only barely worth more than tier 2 in attributes, why bother investing that point? Meanwhile, after character creation, my best move is still to raise agility and cunning rather than improve anything else because attributes are still more valuable than anything else.
Various people suggesting caps wrote:suggestion for caps based on ranks or whatever
Can't say I'm a fan. It seems to defeat the point of having SAs, Help, and so forth if we're putting artificial caps on what can be achieved. They are also annoying to remember and seem like ..well. Less fun.

"Ob 2 --- Oh wow! what a great roll! You rolled six successes! -- wait. What's your skill? Nevermind then. MoS1."

Adding another level of checking and comparison is a drag and feels a bit like you're having your roll taken away.

What we need is an overhaul that addresses the underlying issues, rather than a series of patches to correct what's broken with them.
DannyBoy wrote:My idea is this:

1. Keep attributes at 1-5 scale with 6 being exceptional
2. Increase skills to a 1-10 scale
3. Increase the number of skill points at chargen
4. Keep X+Y

I really feel that a lot of us are making this whole issue a lot more complicated than it needs to be, what with all the check bonuses, fractions, and only counting successes up to the attribute value.
This came up a few pages ago and ran into the problem where you now have two separate scales of difficulty to juggle, as your average attribute roll has 5-6 dice and your average skill would have 8-9, if we assume the same scales.
DannyBoy wrote:Also, while I'm not wholly averse to changing the die type to a d6, I will say that it does change how base TN shifts work in too drastic a way. A level 3 wound is supposed to begin the death spiral by boosting TNs to 8. TN 7 was fluffed as a wound that could be fought through, and with the 'grin and bear it' SA ability it can be easily worked around, which it's supposed to be.
By comparison:
D10 - Chance per die wrote: Wound Level 0-1 TN6= 50% chance
Wound Level 2 TN7=40%
Wound Level 3 TN8=30%
Wound Level 4 TN9=20%
Wound Level 5 TN10=10%
D6 - Chance per die wrote: Wound Level 0-1 TN4= 50% chance
Wound Level 2 TN4=50%
Wound Level 3 TN5=33%
Wound Level 4 TN5=33%
Wound Level 5 TN6=16%
At wound level 3, there's only a 3% difference, and it's more forgiving overall. Given how ridiculously brutal our game's death spiral can be, I think that's a good thing. One must keep in mind that to get a level 3 or 4 wound, you're also generally suffering massive impact in addition to the TN hike.
DannyBoy wrote:Also, with d6s, are we doing away with exploding dice?
By default, yes. They originally existed so that no ob could be too high to have some kind of chance at beating, but in practice, it made things way more swingy than we would have liked. As it stands, there will be enough ways to get bonus dice before the roll that you shouldn't need the explosions afterward.

CURRENT PROPOSALS.
For reasons outlined above, the best variant proposal I've seen in terms of fixing the problem without patching over it or complicating it was the X+Y on a 1-7 scale.. but as pointed out it has a ton of problems and doesn't resolve the underlying issue.

Here are the two versions Higgins and I are currently leaning towards.
Proposal 1 wrote:
  • Attributes and skills work on a 1-8 scale, with 9-10 being T5 territory like the 6th dot is now.
  • The core attributes: Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Will, and Perception.
  • Three derived attributes: Trauma (the average of brawn and will), Reflex (the average of agility and cunning), and Body (1/3 Brawn)
  • Skills and attributes are rolled independently.
  • Skills are tied to an attribute, but only to determine their starting value when first purchased (1/3 of the governing attribute, rounding down).
  • Untrained skills can use whichever attribute is appropriate at the time at its full die pool, but all dice rolled work at max TN.
Proposal 2 wrote:
  • Attributes and skills work on a 1-8 scale, with 9-10 being T5 territory like the 6th dot is now.
  • The core attributes: Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Will, and Perception.
  • Three derived attributes: Trauma (the average of brawn and will), Reflex (the average of agility and cunning), and Body (1/3 Brawn)
  • Skills and attributes are rolled independently and are in no way directly tied, at character creation or otherwise.
  • The Associated Skills mechanic is expanded. Instead of giving a flat +1 die, it gives the value of the thing you're adding in /3. Which makes it useless for 0-2, +1 for 3-5, +2 for 6-8, +3 for 9-10.
  • The effect is no longer just limited to skills. Where before you might go "I'm going to throw a bunch of lawyer-speak at this guy to convince him I'm right -- I'd like to add a die from my Trade: Lawyer to this manipulation check" you can now do that with everything. Bring in your Strength on an Athletics check, Bring Will to a Command roll to challenge someone's authority, bring a bonus from Engineering into your Strength check to apply better leverage, etc.
  • Untrained skills can use whichever attribute is appropriate at the time at its full die pool, but all dice rolled work at max TN.
Scale for either proposal wrote:The scale, again, using Brawn as an illustration:
1. Small animals.
2. Children, the disabled.
3. Sedentary office workers
4. Average, active people. Farmers, laborers
5-6. Professional athletes.
7-8 Professional Strongman types. The height of what normal people can actually achieve.
9-10. Genetic freaks. Tier 5 material. Andrey the Giant. Hafthor Bjornson.
Proposal 1 is the quickest, cleanest, and most consistent. I'd argue that it was the better designed for play.

Proposal 2 has additional benefits and drawbacks.
Pros:
  • Skills aren't tied to any particular attribute.
  • It retains the "RP it a specific way to get bonuses from your other stats" thing that EinBein and others wanted.
  • Fixes the imbalance between stats and attributes.
  • Technically also better-adjusts our current associated skill rules, so that a character with rank 1 in an associated skill isn't getting the same benefit as a character with rank 5.
Cons:
  • In danger of "RP whoring for extra dice," but that's a natural side effect of the desired intention.
  • Where in the first proposal, "dead levels" weren't a consideration after character creation, all skills and attributes now have a modifier attached to them and the dead levels issue is way more present. All of the core skills and attributes are going to look like Agility 5(1), Stealth 7(2).
  • Sorta weird that attributes tie into combat now, but not directly into skills. Not a mechanical issue, so much as an odd asymmetry.
When we get down to it, there are only so many ways Skills and Attributes can interact.
Attribute and Skill Interactions wrote:1. Not at all. Attributes and skills are purchased and rolled separately and ne'er shall the two intermix. Mechanically fine, but might annoy some people. Also slightly inconsistent when attributes then play a part in combat pools.

2. One limits the other in some way, such as attributes determining the number of dice you can throw against a TN based on the skill (TROS), or attributes forming a cap on how many skill dice you can throw. Generally lame, as it means you're hampered by whichever is weaker instead of focusing on getting better at the one you're interested in.

3. Attributes contribute to the skill pool on a 1:1 basis. This is the simplest mathematically, but whenever this is true, you're going to make attributes more valuable than skills, mechanically.

4. You combine attributes and skills on a 1:1 basis, but make the pools asymmetrical in some fashion (such as skills being on a 1-10, attributes being on a 1-5). Retains the mathematical simplicity of 3, but now bloats the pool and creates two different ob scales.

5. Attributes contribute some portion of their value to skills through division which creates some version of dead levels and modifiers (in this regard, Proposal 1 is significantly less offensive).

6. You come up with some kind of multiplication setup instead of division, which has all of the drawbacks of 4 but without the mathematical simplicity.

7. You come up with some kind of chart to precisely fine-tune the relationship between each attribute and each skill when coming up with the final pool. Gets rid of the modifier effect and dead levels, but now you need to reference a chart for every roll. Not recommended.
Of all of the above, 1 and 5 are the least broken. 5 is where the current two proposals come from. Of the two, I think 1 is cleaner/faster/easier. We can retain the "Roleplay description" incentive, but it winds up with the dead level effect.

No matter what system we go with, you're going to have a drawback. The drawbacks I find least acceptable are ones that add mechanical clutter, or a fundamental imbalance.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 17 Dec 2016, 22:54
by thirtythr33
There is one way to deal with dead levels that I don't remember seeing mentioned.

Instead of calculating Brawn/3 = AV etc which has all of the benefits stacked at ranks 1, 4 and 7 you instead use a table that spreads the bonuses out:

Brawn
1 +1 Skills, +1 Trauma
2 +1 AV
3 +1 DR, +1 Trauma
4 +1 Skills
5 +1 AV, +1 Trauma
6 +1 DR
7 +1 Skills, +1 Trauma
8 +1 AV
9 +1 DR, +1 Trauma
10 +1 your choice

(+1 Skills = You would either specify the list of skills that get +X point as a base, or leave it open as "Brawn related skill checks get +X dice" so you can still use X+Y without having to do division math)

Of course, you could do whatever formulation you liked to fine tune how you want to spread out the bonuses. They wouldn't necessarily even have to be symmetrical or repeating. An example for Cunning:
1 +1 Reflex, +1 CP
2 +1 Skills
3 +1 Reflex, +1 CP
4 +1 CP
5 +1 Reflex, +1 Skills
6 +1 CP
7 +1 Reflex, +1 CP
8 +1 Skills
9 +1 Reflex, +1 CP
10 +1 your choice

If people are consistently taking Attributes to specific break points for value, it is trivially easy to tweak the tables. You could get more creative and realistic with your derived attributes and modifiers this way too. For example, you might calculate Trauma as 2+ any Trauma modifiers from the Brawn and Will tables. There might be 5x +1 Trauma modifiers on the Will table and only 3x +1 Trauma modifiers on the Brawn table.

It just means you have to record your bonuses somewhere on the character sheet since you won't be able to calculate them on the fly like you do now. You probably want to do this anyway, since doing roundup(Brawn/3) every time I attack something is stupid; you just want to record that you have a +2 Brawn modifier.

The only drawback I see is that there is a little more bookkeeping during character creation and it is less intuitive for new players to have to deal with so many different modifiers up front.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 18 Dec 2016, 01:44
by nemedeus
33's suggestion is essentially similar to what I said about "splitting up brawn between +damage and +armour".

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 18 Dec 2016, 06:40
by Marras
I really like proposal 2. I agree that this dead level thing can be a problem with this...

Before reading thread this far I had a thought and as this thread is a brainstorming thread I'll just shoot without a lot of analysis.

1) As attributes seem to be too powerful when compared to skills if you go with X+Y system, why not use different dice for skills and attributes? Say, d6 and d10.

2) For number 1 to work, you would have to invert how dice is read. So, if you have TN 4 then rolls of 1-4 is a success instead of 4+. Disadvantage and penalties from wounds would actually lower the TN.

3) So, skills would be d6 (as they would hit more easily) and attributes would use d10 in a skill roll.

This way Agility 5 + Stealth 1 would be different than Agility 1 + Stealth 5.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 18 Dec 2016, 10:54
by Korbel
Agamemnon wrote:4. You combine attributes and skills on a 1:1 basis, but make the pools asymmetrical in some fashion (such as skills being on a 1-10, attributes being on a 1-5). Retains the mathematical simplicity of 3, but now bloats the pool and creates two different ob scales.
If you use 0-4 for Attributes and 0-8 for Skills, big pools are not really an issue anymore (average pool is the same as currently, maximum possible pool - only 1 dice bigger).

When it comes to different Ob scales... I'd really much prefer to roll Attributes in the form of 2A+B (or even design two different Ob-tables), than face all of this dividing-by-3 (which really disgusts me, even if it's only present at character creation). It kinda amazes me, the fact that you're leaning towards those /3 formulas. From the beginning, until now. I expect you will do this and we will have to accept the fact.

Re: 'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

Posted: 18 Dec 2016, 12:52
by dra
Agamemnon wrote: The closest/best alternative proposal to what I've suggested thus far has just been to expand the scale to 1-7 or (1-8), leave X+Y, and make peace with the fact that you're going to chuck 20 dice at a skill check from time to time.

This could almost work if we assumed that the low-end of the scales remain the same and 95% of the population is going to have 2s and 3s for their stats.. but now we're stuck with a host of problems new and old.
  • Attributes are still the best thing to buy regardless of your character concept. As a thief with our present spread, I'd much rather have maxed out agility/cunning and 3s in my skills than 3s in agility/cunning and a max a half-dozen skills. I'd easily rather have Social 6 and middling social skills than maxed out social skills and a middling Social. The only partial work-around would be to make attributes a strange acception to everything else about character creation and give everyone the same amount of points to spend. Aside from this being both an acception and less interesting, it still doesn't completely solve the problem because that just means after character creation my thief is going to want to max out cunning and agility before they do anything else.
Masteries mentioned before solve it. Skills are better because true master has automatic successess/lowers TN.
[*]Naked Dwarf was being argued about before and we'd make it much worse now. Instead of someone with +3 damage fighting +5 damage resist, you can have someone with +3 damage fighting someone with +7 damage resist.
Unless you do what you just did and create a brawn modifier. In case of 1-7 atributes you can even get away with /2 intead of /3 and still avoid naked dwarfs.
[*]We also have the less-discussed Dragon Tap issue, which is the reverse -- My strength 7 individual can now go against a stamina 3 guy and get an MoS1 death from any weapon of +0 or higher. A brawler with the striking proficiency can kill on an MoS1. With only 5 levels of wounds, you cannot have the difference between your damage dealing ability and damage deflecting ability higher than 4 at the most extreme for humans fighting humans, and you want it to be significantly less so for "average" fights. The lower that maximum difference, the fewer things screw up.
As above.